


And It Is Gone Come Morning

by edy



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Depression, M/M, Magical Realism, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6895678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edy/pseuds/edy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Blurryface is a physical manifestation and Josh makes Tyler's world colorful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And It Is Gone Come Morning

**Author's Note:**

> translation into русский available: [К утру всё пройдет](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4504942) by [польза](https://ficbook.net/authors/21397)
> 
> -
> 
> i don't know why i'm here. the last time i wrote for bandom was in 2013, when i was seventeen and still in denial that my chemical romance died. is this my descent back into bandom hell? thanks, twenty one pilots! (i love you)

His lips bust. His knuckles open. Both tremble as he applies balm, thick, heavy, his knuckles bleeding, his lips burning.

"Slow down there."

He does, fingers curling.

"That was… something."

*

His hands are black. He can't tell they're bleeding at first. It's okay. He wraps bandages the color of strawberries around fingers, gauze the color of snow around knuckles.

"Be more careful next time?"

It's a suggestion, but he takes it as gospel.

"I wish you'd let me do that. They look a little tight."

He shakes his head. He hears laughter.

"That's comfortable, then? Yeah."

*

It is night. It is always night. Stars are overhead, and sometimes there are owls, sometimes there are lightning bugs, and he thinks he might be in love.

The lightning bugs disappear, the owls are off and on, and the stars have never been brighter. It is night when it is supposed to be night. It is night, but it is never dark. Night is black, like a broken pen staining his hands. He can't tell if ink is on his hands. His hands are made of ink, dark, black, like a broken pen, like night. He thinks he might be in love.

Night used to be dull, but now he can see colors within the stars. They used to be white against black, but now they are yellow against blue, pink against purple. He thinks he might be in love.

*

He scrapes his knuckles and cuts his lips with cold air. Chapstick can serve as a healing agent for only so long.

"Slow down there."

"I wasn't even doing anything."

"Yeah."

*

Everything used to be black and off shades of white. Everything was fuzzy, static, static. And then he meets Josh, and he almost forgets what it felt like to be shoved under water and forced to breathe.

*

Looking at Josh is looking at the world through a Snapchat filter. It takes a bit to get used to, but then he can't think of viewing it in any other way.

*

Josh isn't bothered by his skin. "It's kind of cool, you know? Does it need to be, like… an intimate touch? What if some guy bumps into you on the street?"

"Nothing would happen. Probably."

"But as a precaution, you just don't touch people?"

"I don't know what would happen."

"What if I touched your knee right now? What would happen?"

"I dunno. Hit me. Let's see."

Josh touches his knee, and after a moment and a moment after that, Josh removes his hand. "You're wearing, like, pants. Maybe nothing happened. Skin on skin."

"Maybe." But that night, he peels off his clothes, and sees the skin on his right knee is several shades lighter than the darkest black. It scares him. He goes to bed and doesn't sleep. Josh is an acquaintance. Josh is nobody. And Josh has managed to remove the poison staining his skin for years on end.

*

He debates on telling Josh. He doesn't.

*

His eyes are separate from the rest of his face. He never understood that. His mom wiped tears from his face once, when he was a kid, and in the morning, he saw pale skin demanding for sun, for more contact. His nose was black, his lips black, his teeth white. They've been white. He doesn't smile.

He smiles now. Josh makes him smile. Josh isn't bothered by his skin.

Josh is stretching, arms above his head, yawning as if his jaw is unhinged. His elbow connects with a chin, up to a nose, and then there's blood, there're apologies, there's "Tyler! Are you okay?"

"I'm _bleeding_!"

"But are you okay?"

"I… I think so." Tyler refuses to drop his hands. "I need to go to the bathroom."

"Lemme see first."

Tyler's nose isn't broken. It's bleeding, soaking his black hands, his pink lips, his pink skin, pink, new, fresh. Josh looks, doesn't say anything, just widens his eyes, and Tyler gets up from the couch and disappears into the bathroom.

*

He hides underneath heavy clothing and hopes he can disappear forever. Forever is two hours. Josh knocks on the door. "Are you okay?"

He was bleeding. He was black and blue, and now he is red and pink and white.

"I'm okay."

*

"Come in here," he says to Josh, "and let's see what happens."

They stand in front of a mirror and watch his arm lose its pigment. It flicks away like a sun burn, falls to the floor, and disintegrates.

"I didn't even touch you," Josh says. "Who touched you?"

"No one."

*

It is always night on stage. He looks upon lights from cell phones, hands sticking out as if lost at sea. They're grabbing for him, wanting to touch, to touch, and he steps forward, his shoes black, his socks red, and he walks on water, conquers a storm. And Josh is behind him, bang, bang, bang. His skin burns, his feet sweat, but on the bus, he removes his black shoes and red socks and finds black skin underneath it all. The water wraps around him. He doesn't breathe.

*

His black feet turn pink after stepping on one of Josh's shirts left on the floor. He doesn't notice it until he's showering. It hurts, like new skin does, and he breaks in the shower, crouching, stroking his toes and toenails and calluses and everything else in the world.

*

It's different with his hands. They never stop being ink spilled into an ocean. He picks up things, Josh's things, his things, and they are black. They never stop being black.

It's different with his hands. He touches with his hands. In the early days, he would avoid touching. He didn't know what would happen. And then, he's doing an interview with Josh, and they're showing off a secret handshake they made up on the spot, and it's only after the camera shuts down that Josh says, "Hey, you were touching me, man." And Tyler looks at his hands and laughs, and Josh laughs, and they move on.

It's different with his hands. Tyler can touch Josh and not worry about stamping anything onto his skin. It's strange. Tyler can touch Josh, and Josh can touch Tyler, and nothing happens. Nothing happens.

It's different with his hands.

*

Tyler has tattoos. Josh has tattoos. Josh likes Tyler's tattoos. "So, how did they… do it?"

The ink on Tyler's skin, the actual ink, not the metaphor, not the personification, is white at first, and it shifts to black once he loses the ink on his skin, the metaphor, the personification.

As they are watching his arm fade in the mirror, the blocks of white ink turn to black, turn old, turn new.

Josh says, "I didn't even touch you."

Josh says, "Who touched you?"

Tyler says, "No one."

Tyler thinks, _You. I was thinking about you._

*

He gives it a name when he's a teenager. A name makes it less scary. A name makes him stronger, if only for a moment.

Josh can put two and two together. "Can we stop him?"

Tyler shrugs. "I don't know."

*

He sits in empty rooms and watches a syringe of galaxies plunge into his veins. Stabbing, twisting, he watches the stars glow, watches the stars turn red, turn pink. They were black, they were blue, and now they are pink. Tyler likes pink.

*

There are moments when he doesn't think he can make it. And then, Josh appears, like a stroke of lightning, and shivers pound through Tyler's body over and over, over and over, and he can feel his thighs burn and scrape and stab and stab and stab. He's being stabbed. He's being spun in circles over and over, over and over.

Josh wears his insecurities on his eyes. They are the brightest red Tyler has ever seen. "So you won't be alone," he explains, and Tyler swallows and smiles, and his chest constricts and twists and burns and scrapes and stabs, stabs, stabs.

*

It is not night on stage, with Josh. It is evening on stage, with Josh. There is roaring, but it isn't from a tidal wave. Tyler hears water rushing in his ears, his lungs filling, filling, and then a plug, a stopper, in the sink, in the ocean. There is roaring, but it isn't from a tidal wave.

Tyler waves. Josh kisses Tyler's shoulder.

As if striking a match, Tyler's arm burns, the ink falling away, vanishing, vanishing, and Josh doesn't notice. He's waving, too, not at the tidal wave, at the crowd, at the roaring crowd. Tyler is new. Tyler is reborn.

*

Josh notices once they're back on the bus.

"Bro," Josh says.

"What, bro?" Tyler says.

"Your arm, bro," Josh says.

"I know, bro," Tyler says.

*

"Lemme see."

Josh sees.

"We still have work to do."

*

They don't have to do much work.

Tyler doesn't hide underneath heavy clothing anymore. He shows more skin, allows the slits in the sleeves of his shirts be torn, be open. He shows more skin, pink skin, pale skin, skin he never felt comfortable enough to display until now. This skin is not new. The ink dripped and dripped onto the ground once Josh's arms left his torso. They were hugging, squeezing, and Tyler had his face hidden in Josh's neck. And in the morning, Tyler doesn't tell Josh. Josh finds out when Tyler wears a cut-off shirt. He's smiling. He's smiling.

*

They don't have to do much work.

It's different with his hands.

They do handshakes, high-fives, playful punches and pinches.

His fingers are black. His palms are black. His hands are black. It's different with his hands.

Josh points it out one night. "They're a little lighter. Or am I imagining it?"

"It's probably your imagination, loser."

But they are lighter. It's more known in the presence of a stage. It's more known when Josh laces their fingers together and squeezes, like a hug, like something like a hug, like something Tyler hasn't experienced for a very long time.

It's different with his hands. When one sheds the poison, the other does, too.

*

Josh is his antivenin.

*

"I want to try something."

"Hit me."

Josh tugs on Tyler's earlobe, rubs it between his thumb and forefinger. It's dirt underneath his fingers. He's washing it with his skin cells, with warmth, with hopeful advances and careful consideration. "It's not connected to your neck. Your neck is still…"

"Yeah." Tyler watches Josh sit on the couch. There's room, but Josh sits right next to him. Their thighs are touching. "Someone might need to, to, uh, throttle me."

Josh does. It's slow, not exactly a throttle, but Tyler reacts like it is. He jumps; Josh tries again, slower than last time, just cradling the back of Tyler's neck. He rubs his thumb into Tyler's skin again, this time on the side of his neck, stroking, petting.

"I want to try something," he whispers, and Tyler whispers, "Hit me," and Josh kisses him.

*

Josh is brown, blue, and gray, green, red, and pink. And Tyler is blind. His eyes are wet, his vision is blurry, and he thinks he might be in love.

*

Josh cards his fingers through Tyler's hair. "Why your neck? Why your hands? Why were they last?"

Tyler sticks his pinky into the tunnel in Josh's ear. "Because I create with them."

*

There are moments when he doesn't think he can make it. Josh is there, orbs of color whirling around him. He's starlight and crystals and healing herbs. Tyler is stationary, the roots of a dead tree.

Someday, he will get better. Someday, the colors will come back. Someday, he will smile and not have to spend the rest of the week in a dark room.

Most nights, Josh spreads color across Tyler's skin, paints it purple, yellow, orange. The stains are there come morning. The stains will always be there because Josh is color, he is life, and Tyler faces threats every night, threats to go under, to not resurface, but Josh is there, Josh is color, and Tyler is color. Tyler is color with Josh, and these colors are not gone come morning.


End file.
